The launch of Digital Employment Twinning Platform software designed in cooperation between the Ministry of National Education, İstanbul Chamber of Trade (İTO) and İstanbul Chamber of Industry (İSO) was held with the participation of the Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer.

 

Addressing the launch ceremony organized in the İTO Assembly Hall, Minister Özer stressed that Türkiye has been experiencing a universalization and massification process in education in the last 20 years.

 

"It is a period for compensating the damages that occurred due to wrong education policies of the past. In other words, headscarf ban, coefficient practice and negligence of social demands concerning education and limitations in the accession to education caused damages. Thanks to Allah, we have overcome all these problems in the last 20 years under the leadership of esteemed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Now, all children and young people of Türkiye became the main driving force in our competitive ability. No matter which part of the country they live, all of our children can easily access education from preschool to higher education. We have lifted all anti-democratic barriers in front of education," said Özer.

 

Reminding that academically successful students did not prefer vocational education due to wrong policies, Özer stated, "During that period, Vocational High Schools turned into a place where academically unsuccessful students piled up. The damage caused three important problems. First of all, employers could not find the quality of human resources. Labor market paid the cost of these policies until 2021. Secondly, there was a success difference among schools. It was one of the fundamental problems as frequently mentioned in the international PISA student success survey. Third problem was unpredictable. When academically unsuccessful students are piled in one type of school, there is a decrease in class attendance figures and increase in the addiction and other disciplinary problems. This sociological problem was not predicted by experts before. As you can see, a single wrong policy may lead to multi-dimensional damage in society."

 

"We are working night and day in order to reinforce vocational education and we are happy to become a part of this success story. In the past, the state was involved in both education and production service. When the state withdrew from the production and service sector, the private sector failed to employ the graduates of vocational high schools. At this point, we called on business world representatives to manage vocational schools together and let's join forces to update the curriculum, plan skill training programs for students and organize on the job training programs for teachers and students," said Özer.

 

Özer pointed out that this model was first implemented in İstanbul and after that vocational and technical Anatolia high schools started to write different success stories.

 

"Our goal is to give applied education not make production. These schools are not factories. They are education institutes. Our concern is to reinforce education by making production. As a result, the production capacity of our school increased from 200 million to 1 billion and 162 million liras. As our President announced, our goal is to increase this figure to 1,5 billion liras but I believe that we can exceed 2 billion liras," stated Özer.

 

He reminded that Covid-19 pandemic showed that if you cannot produce you can respond to the demands of your people even if you have money and vocational high schools produced all needed goods varying from masks to disinfectants within a short period of time.

 

Özer stressed that they have founded 50 R&D centers in the vocational high schools and this year 7,532 products of these schools were registered. Before that, the Ministry of National Education was making a registry of 2,9 products a year.

 

Özer also mentioned the amendment in the Law on Vocational Education  and noted that the number of apprentices and foremen enrolled in vocational centers increased from 159,000 to 570,000.

 

"Our goal is to enroll 1 million students in vocational education centers until the end of this year. This country must be stronger. As the Ministry of National Education, we will work harder in order to raise the quality of human resources labor market needs and educate stronger individuals. I believe that this cooperation will be a blessing for all of us. It is an important step in the reinforcement of the "education, production-employment" cycle," stated Özer.

 

The Ministry will establish a digital portal which shows detailed information about students enrolled in vocational education. Members of İTO and İSO will have access to this portal so that they can twin their vacant positions with students.